“You aren’t eating,” he said.
“I am.” The beef was stiff. She remembered her mother’s hamburgers, the tender way she shaped each one, the flash of heat, the nest of lettuce and the crown of tomato. Yuki always ached for seconds. “I’m just not that hungry.”
“Don’t be such a girl.”
“I am a girl.”
“You’re a woman, and women eat their meat.”
“Okay then.” Each bite felt like trying to chew through her own tongue.
“Good girl,” he said.
“I thought I was a woman.”
“Sorry, good woman,” he said. “My good woman.”
He stood before her and bowed, offering her his hand. She curtseyed and took it. My, she thought and the meat was forgotten. He pulled her upright, and then led her by the hand to his bedroom. She thought of her father holding her hand as she crossed the street. Then she didn’t think of her father any more.
The bed surprised her. The white coverlet was embellished with velvet roses. “It was Mom’s.” He shrugged.
Lou lowered her onto his mother’s sheets. She lay still as he pulled off her pantyhose, ran his fingers under the band of her skirt to find the cusp of the zip pull, and tugged. Yuki knew she was holding her breath, but she couldn’t let it out. The air bubbled in her lungs. She wanted him to do this. This wasn’t on a park bench. She was safe as a rabbit in a hutch, in this warm square room. She’d chosen Lou. Still, she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do. What was expected of her? Not doing anything seemed safest.
She lay stiff and still. The ceiling bulb was enclosed in a torn white paper lantern. Lou hadn’t turned it off. He undid her shirt buttons. She remembered the inch-long hair. A single black eel; its head was buried in the underside of her left nipple. She’d tried plucking it, but the pain was intense and within a week it re-emerged. She’d given up. Nobody ever looked at her breasts. She hadn’t expected Lou to choose that particular night. He’d surprised her at the office. Her breasts were unprepared.
Yuki knew she should excuse herself, and ransack his bathroom for clippers. Lou pulled the shirt from her shoulders. She let herself be lifted as he unclasped the bra. He worked silently. The eel was revealed, coiled but still plainly visible. She waited for him to react. He ran a garlicky tongue behind her ear. He held her. Some of the things he did felt nice. She wished he’d say something. Just: hi, or hey there. Something that might hint at what was going on in his head. When he did speak, it was, “Don’t worry, I’ll use a rubber.”
She saw his dick briefly, a pink hunk of flesh like a quarter-pound of salmon. Could he squeeze that in? He could.
It hurt, a lot. It was nothing like Lillian described in her books. Yuki didn’t feel warm. She didn’t feel faint. Frigid clarity kept her eyes open. She wondered if he could tell this was her first time. She saw a brown spider hanging on the wall. She remembered that her mother said spiders symbolized good luck. It cast a gray shadow. In what world was something so hideous lucky? Lou’s ass squeezed into two concave scoops. He sighed. Then it was over.
The next time was better. The third time, she even enjoyed it. But he stayed mute. It was as if removing her underwear cast a silencing-spell that could only be broken by the extraction of semen. After they were done, he talked about work, the stories he wanted to cover and the assholes in Arts & Culture. Yuki was beginning to understand that Lou lusted after Arts & Culture. He’d never been to college.
“Listen to this,” he said, “It’s Kerouac.”
To Yuki the poem sounded gawky and the invocation of dawn cheap.
“It’s a haiku,” Lou said.
Perhaps some things spoiled during trans-Pacific transit.
“My father used to make me recite Bashō,” she said. Lou nodded, and kept reading. It took her a moment to understand that he didn’t know who Bashō was and didn’t seem interested in finding out. Soundlessly, Yuki mouthed Kyou nitemo kyou natsukashi ya hototogisu. The cadences had been beaten into her muscles. She remembered each syllable, each smack of her father’s ruler on her knuckles and each proud ruffle of hair. Lou asked her what she was doing.
“Stretching my mouth,” she said.
Yuki waited for Lou to tell her that he’d left Lillian.
One day after work, she walked to the old apartment building and stood under the window trying to see Lillian typing. She strained to hear the tap of keys. But all she saw was the sky reflected in the dirty glass. She stood for an hour, nervous and a little bored. With a ballpoint pen she drew the window on the back of her hand, sketching the squiggle of Lillian’s window-latch. She knew the exact click it made. Why was she here? To be scolded? To apologize? To ask for forgiveness? Just to see Lillian’s fury, and to know that he really had chosen her? No one came, and she got on the subway to Queens. She tried not to wonder if Lillian had ever crossed that river.
That night after he fucked her again, she asked him, “You left her, right?”
“Of course.” He looked surprised. “You thought that all this time . . .”
“Well you didn’t say. How did she take it?”
Lou paused. They were in his bed. She pulled the coverlet up to her chin. She was quite fond of it now. It seemed to be a good sign that he lived in a place with roses.
“She wasn’t pleased, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“What did she say?”
“She threw her shoes at me.”
“Did you tell her about us?”
“No. It seemed . . . I told her I wasn’t going to marry her.”
“She wanted that?”
“She’d hinted.”
Yuki tried to imagine Lillian hinting rather than demanding. She thought of the white throat pulsing with Irish coffee, and the beat of nails on keys. Had this woman really wanted a white dress? Or had she just wanted a piece of paper that claimed her territory? Yuki had heard a girl on the radio say that marriage was a form of capitalism, another way of buying a person. But was it wrong to want to own and to be owned? “Would you ever marry?” If Yuki pointed her toes, she could reach the end of the bed, pressing them up against the painted bars. She did it now. Why touch wood when you could rely on steel?
“Nah. Why nail yourself to someone?”
Lou slapped the light switch. He rolled left then right, like a dog flattening grass. His breath turned heavy. Where would you be nailed? In the hands, the heart, the dick? Did a person choose? Yuki got up and walked to the bathroom. She stared at the white tiles, the white sink, the tube of white toothpaste. The white paint encroached on the edges of the mirror. She brushed the scum from her tongue. She flushed the toilet and smacked the lid shut. Returning to the bedroom, she let the door slam shut. Lou didn’t even bother complaining. He lay ignoring her, sheets pulled up to his neck. She was about to get into their bed, but she stopped on the cold floor. It wasn’t their bed. It was his bed. And soon she would have to go back to her bed in the room filled with Nothing.
“I was thinking, um, maybe, do you think? I could? I want to move in?” Nothing. Could he really just have slept through her fury? Fine this was a test run then. “It would save money. I could pay you some rent. I don’t take up much space.”
They’d been having sex for a few months, but she wasn’t sure he knew how to pronounce her last name. He’d never called her anything but Yuki. These things weren’t obstacles. They were reasons. If she lived with him, he couldn’t help but learn.
She got back into bed. She touched the place under her nipple where the eel had been shaved. A sharp fin scraped her fingertip. She rubbed it left and then right. Was it normal? She’d never heard of hair growing on nipples. People didn’t talk about it. She’d heard her new roommates comparing razors to waxes. They mocked hairy-pitted hippie girls. But no one mentioned nipples. She wondered if Lou hadn’t noticed the hair that first night. She began to silently tap out Revolution against the bars of the bed.
“Fine.”
“What?”
&n
bsp; “Yes. Okay. You can move in. Stop wiggling.”
She stopped and lay awake counting silently: our bed, our table, our chair, our floors, our spider.
The next day was a Saturday. Lou made pancakes from the box. The oven hunkered in the corner of the main room of the apartment. He’d opened the window to let out the steam. There was no vent. His over-long pink striped boxer shorts came down almost to his knees. Sweat spangled his back.
“Grab a plate.”
He kept his china in an old dresser. The dresser had glass knobs, and a flaking mustard paint job. She chose a plate with a floral border, reminiscent of his sheets. Yuki wondered what had happened to his mother. She assumed the usual, what happened to all mothers. But what specifically? Tuberculosis, liver failure, heart attack? The pancakes had uncertain edges, wobbly and uneven.
“Sorry they aren’t prettier. We were out of milk.” He slid one onto her plate. “Also eggs.”
It was dry. She compensated by scraping the last of the jam from his jar. He ate directly from the pan. He didn’t wait for the cast iron to cool before dropping it on the table. There were burn marks all over the table. The yellow pine was as ringed as a puddle in a storm. He ate silently. This, in and of itself, was not a sign. Lou was often quiet. But she expected some acknowledgment of their agreement.
“So it’s cool,” she asked, “if I move in this weekend?”
“Yeah, fine.”
He was hers. The jam was sweet as victory, and now it was her jam too.
The next Saturday, she waited for Lou on the stoop, sitting on her hard-sided suitcase. On the amber plastic, her father had written in neat calligraphy: Oyama Yukiko. She traced the stroke with her pinkie finger. Lou grabbed the case, and beckoned her to the subway. It was strange that she’d thought of him as a small man. He was larger than her. They sat side by side on the subway, the case pressed up against their knees. The ride over the silvered East River might as well have been a flight. She closed her eyes and felt the train soar.
She’d been to Lou’s apartment before, but she’d never been so aware of the sweeping borders she was crossing. When she moved from Japan to New York, she’d been a child. She counted the seconds they spent hanging over the river. She counted the gray-backed gulls, and the smoke-humped boats. When she was a child, they asked her how many stars were on the flag, but she always forgot. Yet she’d carry into senility that on that particular August morning there were seven free seats in the third car at 12:30 p.m., going over the bridge.
Lou pushed his hands into her hair and pulled their faces into a kiss. Two boys in white jeans whistled. Yuki opened her eyes and saw the soft curve of Lou’s cheek, and behind that a portly woman in a large hat pulled her son close to her skirts.
“You’re really happy to have me then?” She hadn’t dared ask, when she still thought the answer might be no.
“Of course. I’m officially reporting for duty. Okay, Captain?” He ran his finger down the bridge of her nose. She thought again of the cats that walked the alleyways, and how when one let her run her fingers behind its ears, she felt chosen. She reached up and touched the soft skin behind Lou’s ear. He pressed the side of his face into her palm.
Later, she’d think that unpacking her shirts, folding her socks into their own drawer, was the happiest she’d be for at least a decade.
The Copy girls weren’t pleased. They told her she’d still have to pay next month’s rent. Yuki wrote a check. When girls left to get married, the typing pool threw them a party. Yuki didn’t expect similar treatment. The Copy girls could drown in homemade martinis. Making a home with Lou was enough. She had a person of her very own.
1970, Indigo Extra
Dark and rich, but fades in the sun. A naval officer’s pants, Pepsi cans in a tub of ice cubes, the cotton of my father’s summer yukata.
Yuki wasn’t shocked by the naked woman at the center of the room. When she was a girl, she’d bathed with her mother. Her arms had propped between her mother’s knees, as maternal hands traced bubble trails down her back. And how many times had Odile lifted her dress to reveal the parallelogram of air between her thighs? How often had Odile asked if the distance was shrinking? How many times had Odile snapped the elastic of her panties in despair at her supposedly huge stomach? Each snap revealed leonine coils of hair.
She’d seen the ad for
THE ART STUDENTS LEAGUE OF NEW YORK
Classes reasonably priced
in The Paper. The operator informed her in a breezy rehearsed tone that, “The League was founded in 1875 by artists and for artists. Alumni include Rothko and Pollock.” And also that the only class with an empty spot was Thursday Life Drawing.
Yuki’s tiny sketchbook looked ridiculous leaning against the paint-sequined easel, as did her worn-down bunny eraser. She wasn’t the only one poorly prepared. To her right, a middle-aged woman who looked strikingly like Maude from the office was using a sketchbook with butterflies, glittery butterflies.
The instructor handed out sticks of vine charcoal. Yuki could still see the vine in the burnt stick—it had once been a growing thing. It was very light; she closed her eyes and it felt as if it put no weight on her at all. It was only a soft touch. Yuki struck her first curve onto the sheet. It was a good curve, clean and smooth as the cheek. Her hands found a glide and the arch of the nose swished onto the page. The black stick slashed into the white. Her hand moved, while she saw suddenly how the woman’s ear seeped smoothly into the side of her face. She saw the brow ridge and just the edge of a measles scar between the woman’s eyebrows. If she had seen the woman on the street, Yuki thought, she would not have seen her at all. It was only gripped by the burnt wood that she was able to know the woman. Her hands were covered in black powder and she felt cleaner than she’d ever done.
She finished the shadow that hung above the woman’s top lip. Yuki looked down. And for a moment, she did not understand what she’d done. Surely, she had been looking at the page the whole time. And yet, she had made nothing. A fog. A blur. A nothing. She looked around the room.
The other students produced work of similar mediocrity. Several had not drawn the model at all. They’d simply collected marks and colors, smears, and for this they looked proud of themselves. She could respect the drama of Pollock and Rothko, but she couldn’t see the talent of these poor relations.
She stood staring at her own work. Yuki was paying for this class. She was paying for it with the still, hot air of the reception desk at The Paper. The rent she saved living with Lou paid for these classes. She’d traded her father’s hope for this chance. The last time she’d spoken to him, she’d been trying in Japanese, trying to show him she was still a good daughter.
“Moshi moshi, Dad, it’s Yuki.” He’d grunted assent and she’d continued, “I got a job.”
“I know. We received your letter.”
“I don’t like science or math. I wouldn’t have been a good doctor.”
There was a scratching noise and her mother said, “We called Graychild-san. She says you do not live with her any more.”
“I have roommates, Mom.” She did not know the word for roommates in Japanese.
“Come home. I miss you.”
“Tell Dad, I will come home after I’m an artist. That’s why I’m staying in New York to be an artist like . . .” She realized she didn’t know any Japanese artists. There was Ono, but she was hanging out with a naked white man. She didn’t know anyone her parents would want her to be. “Like, Frida Kahlo.” It was a stupid comparison. Frida Kahlo lived in Mexico, not New York, and, if Yuki remembered right, was an heiress of some kind.
She heard her mother’s voice faintly repeating her message to her father. Then she heard her father shouting. “Respectable women do not become artists. No. No. No. This is bad. I should not have brought her to that ugly country.”
“Shhh. Shhh.” Her mother redirected her voice to the telephone. “We have to go. Long-distance call. But when you have a show, you’ll i
nvite us. Mm? We will get burgers together.”
And so now, her mother was waiting for burgers and a show and Yuki couldn’t even draw one single naked woman.
The other students began to roll up their papers, sliding them into folders and long cardboard tubes. Yuki just wanted to tear hers in half. But there was the nose. That sweep, under the smudge; she could still see it and something in her just wanted to follow its upward turn. Perhaps she should keep the picture. Just for a nose? Not even for a nose, for the edge of where flesh met air. The woman with the butterfly notebook jostled Yuki’s easel. Somewhere behind her, water gushed as hands were washed. Yuki pressed a thumb against the dark corner of her page, but the print disappeared into a generic blur.
“Are you okay?”
She looked up. The face was smiling at her and perhaps she had forgotten all faces but that of the soft-fleshed model, because she didn’t know who he was. She blinked.
“Cheer up, you aren’t thumb-sized yet but I’m sure you’ll get there.”
Oh. Yes. Him. The shrinking samurai speech—she bit her lip in humiliation. The Plaza felt far more than a year ago, a decade maybe. Was it, Edward, no something stranger, Edison? Back then, had he said something about art classes?
“Have fun?” he asked.
“What’s not to like? It’s an hour free from would-be journalists asking me if they can get five minutes with the editor to pitch an article about the health benefits of marijuana.” Her failure to sound blasé hung awkwardly between them. “This is where you go to school?”
“I’m getting my Masters, downtown at the Co-op.” He was speaking loudly.
“In . . .” His résumé was forgotten, if she’d ever known it.
“Architecture. I’m going to be an architect.”
He said it with blithe confidence, the way little girls announce their princess career plans. Imagining that he’d already been to college was challenging. Yuki dredged her memory for that sun-thick summer afternoon.
“This is for fun, my break from all those dowels and white card.”
Harmless Like You Page 11